A cardiac imaging study led by Hossein Bahrami, MD, PhD, assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), along with investigators from Johns Hopkins University and five other institutions, showed a correlation between higher inflammatory biomarkers and an increased prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD) in men infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). CAD is a narrowing of the arteries, likely due to the presence of calcified and non-calcified plaque. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) on June 27, 2016. Researchers examined nearly 925 men, 575 of whom were infected with HIV, from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study. The researchers used computed tomography (CT) angiography to detect signs of subclinical CAD, such as narrowed arteries and the amount, density and calcification of plaque. Participants were also measured for the presence of seven inflammatory biomarkers. This study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is the largest coronary CT scan imaging study on men infected with HIV to date. “We found that men infected with HIV had higher levels of inflammatory biomarkers than men who were not infected,” said Bahrami. “There was a strong, independent association between the presence of these inflammatory biomarkers and subclinical CAD detected by CT scan. Although this study does not definitely prove the causal relationship between these markers and heart disease, it is suggestive of a possible role that persistent inflammation (even in HIV infected patients that are under appropriate treatments) may play in increasing the risk of heart disease in these patients.” HIV-infected individuals...